TheMongoose

I'm with you on this one. I can think and walk if that's all I'm doing, but I can't even stand while I'm trying to code.

Yes. Next question.

Edit: I swear that title said over hyped the first time I read it, but it may just be the constant AI glazing making me lose my mind.

They aren't hated enough.

I can't wait to instead continue spending my money on a 10 person indie studio's game that's NOT full of AI slop and is actually fun.

We always think there's some magic new thing that's gonna fix our problems. But when we get that thing we discover that we're still kinda just the same disorganized mess we always have been.

It's harder to accidentally click the web browser and waste time on HN from a pad of paper.

It's a physical object that you don't have to remember to click on. But it's also not an app that's sending you annoying alerts at random times. It's just there, reminding you it exists and have things to do.

Reminds me of this thread, and this answer in particular.

https://www.reddit.com/r/recruiting/comments/1kzvlau/comment...

Unicorn hunting is probably some of it. I followed up on one that sent me a rejection letter after two interviews and just said "I see your job has been re-posted" Never heard back. =)

Charge a lot more to come in and re-write the spaghetti mess that the vibe coder left the business with into a product that actually works.

You don't need to. "I like {language}" is enough. Arguing over the best language is a massive waste of time and energy.

Desperate to outsource their thinking, too lazy to punch a few keys and jostle a few brain cells into contacting one another.

I wouldn't VC anything personally, that'd be just trading one leash for another.

I'm curious what the point you're trying to make is. It's not like ex-FAANG folks are the only ones reporting an endless stream of soul crushing rejection letters.

How anyone reasonably expects me to not tie self worth to a task that I enjoy doing, and perform a minimum of 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a mystery to me. The same goes for the folks that think the environment that I spend that time in should somehow not have an effect on my well-being.

The best I can do is understand how deeply broken the hiring process has been for a while now, and that we have still found a way to make it worse in the past few years.

It also probably helps that while my personal endeavors have so far generated $0 and I'll need to address the cash flow situation in some way soon, they have generated more genuine satisfaction than my last job. Which is surprising because I generally liked the work in my last role.

Anecdotally even folks with great resumes listing recent FAANG experience are having a hard time landing roles currently. They've also coined the silly term "The Great Hesitation" for the market currently where everyone is "waiting to see" instead of hiring.

Mostly I channel my depression and anxiety into spite which I then use to fuel other endeavors.

If working for the stupidest, most short sighted, group of humans that we have yet developed through decades of corporate nonsense is no longer the way to have steady employment then it's time to find something else.

I don't watch anime, and I'm not gonna do your market research for you, but here is what I know from existing on the internet and 2 seconds of "refresh my memory" searching.

1. the guy who started the studio hates AI

2. a lot of fans of the studio hate AI

3. a lot of the art community despises AI

4. there's a lot of free generator links, and your site doesn't appear on the first page of a search for "ghibli ai"

Take a look at every company currently. They're trading the short term illusion of economic gain for a stable and skilled talent pool of employees that are engaged and productive and a public that doesn't hate them and their products.

No, it didn't make sense in 2015 either. For all the reasons you correctly identified. But if someone tries to make me to use some AI "collaboration" crap to get a job I'm just gonna decline and go work in another field.

Because the AI bros can't imagine a world in which they don't outsource every single thought to the slop factory.

Right now you're competing with people that have years of actual experience writing code for companies and an army of new grads who know nothing but have the degree and are desperate/young enough to work for nothing or near enough to as makes no difference.

You're also doing this somewhere in the vicinity of the peak of the "AI will replace all the programmers" stupidity.

> Unfortunately, a portfolio is nowhere to be found, as while programming for pleasure, my ADHD-tendencies flit from cool thing to cool thing to cool thing and I never seem to get a project really presentable.

Long term I'd say that you should fix this. You need to produce something that is either real or real adjacent. Now maybe all your half finished projects are the most impressive Python ever written, I don't know you. But nobody is really going to crawl through the graveyard of half started , half baked, and half finished projects looking for a reason to hire you these days. If they are HR they might not even look at your GH at all.

It's also worth considering if you're even suited to a corporate job coding. Mostly you're going to maintain and/or write old boring crap a lot. If you can't stay excited about your own ideas for long enough to finish anything, will it destroy your "sensitive super-introvert" soul to write yet another CRUD app or go change the crusty old TPS report collection system to add the new field?

Short term, get a crap job (like you said you plan to do) and apply for all the crap coding jobs if you still really want to, maybe you get lucky.

Here's a linkie for you if you so choose: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ludics-guide-to-getting-soft...

It's written for the Australia job market, but I've noticed an up-tick in response rate since I started applying his tips.

An IDE that doesn't inject AI slop into my work constantly.

Last week, I saw this https://www.economist.com/business/2025/05/21/welcome-to-the...

I disagree that we're in the trough. I think we're just at the start of the downward slope. But I've seen a slight sentiment shift recently.

I did briefly wonder if it was fear of being cancelled for not using AI, but then dismissed that as too crazy to be true.

I'm not as bullish on the future of AI as you though. I expect there will soon be a "find out" phase to all this mess, and I look forward to it.

The conclusion confuses me. If you don't want to become a vibe coder then STOP USING AI TO WRITE CODE. It's as simple as that.

Who's gonna provide the training data for thew new version if nobody updates?

By this logic we will never have another new library again. Period. We will never have a substantial API change to an existing library either, since there will be no training data for it.

What do you think?

Why does the argument start out as "senior engineers need to use more AI coding tools" and suddenly shift to product features?

How does AI make a better error message? Why does AI need to autocomplete a form? The only argument I see here is for paying more attention to the UX, which is absolutely important, but does NOT need AI.

This smells like a "you need to prompt harder, my stonks are depending on you" take that was written by AI.

..... What?

Manage yourself.

I feel like you may be one of those managers that wants to schedule more meetings for me and have 1:1's and "coach" and all that. When all I really want is to be left alone to do my work in my sweet home office.

I don't. None of that sounds useful to me.

I don't want a slop machine to purchase things for me. I manage my calendar just fine with a calendar app.

I don't need a swarm of agents to make up research results, I don't need AI to communicate nonsense on my behalf, analyze anything, and I damn sure don't want it to plan anything for me.

If I needed to report on something I'd use something like Excel or SQL to organize data. The internet has enough slop content, certainly don't need to generate more of that.

Absolutely don't need it to write garbage, security vulnerability laden, code for me. If I did for some reason a phone wouldn't be the right tool for that job anyway.